Savagely Promised
I taste the residue of uranium lingering in the air as we walk across a field that had been lined with landmines. Jase kneels while shaking his head at all the dead bodies lining the outside of the blast zone. The rest were completely incinerated.
“This is crazy. These were Unaligned officials. This is Unaligned territory, and these weren’t set by us,” he sighs out.
“If this trap hadn’t been set, our men would have walked right into an ambush. We think they received Intel on our tracking,” a man asserts.
As Jase continues to play his oddly important role, I walk over to a guy I’ve known for so, so long, and I prop up beside him.
“I should have known they baited a trap,” he almost whispers.
His red hair falls to his brow as his eyes cast their shame on the ground.
“It wasn’t a baited trap, Crane. It was a real trail they used against you.”
He sighs, his eyes staying fixed on the singed ground below. Then he finally shakes his head while looking up at me.
“Would you have known?”
I would have smelled the scents of the old trail mixing with the new bodies. I would have felt the heat of so many hybrids bundled in one place on such a cool day. I would have felt the shift in the air, and heard the slight whistle of the wind when it had to strain to go between so many extra things that were crowded together.
“I don’t know,” I lie.
“You would have known, Aria. I know you would have known. We couldn’t ever pull one over on you. There’s no way you would have missed this. Damn it. I’m probably going to lose my fucking job, and I deserve to.”
This is high profile. Crane is good, but he’s not that good. What’s the commander thinking?
“No you don’t. What I’m curious about is how these traps were set up. I’m going to go investigate something. Grab you some blood. You look like hell.”
He touches his swollen eye and then his bloody lip before nodding.
“Yeah, the uranium blasted through the trees not too far from where we were. It’s just a few grazes,” he says while wiping a drip of blood from his split lip.
I walk over to the traps that were set. You can learn a lot about the expertise of someone based on their abilities with a bomb. Squatting down, I notice something instantly.
There aren’t any wires. These mines were manufactured to blow based on a sophisticated chip that only a mind as skilled as mine could have developed.
“What do you see, babe?” Jase asks while kneeling down beside me.
“I see a design far too sophisticated for most people to have knowledge of. These aren’t touch activated, they're sound activated. That means someone couldn’t have avoided the traps by dodging them. The second a sound erupted close enough to trigger them, it would have set them all off. It’s the most efficient way to take down this many people.”
“Damn,” he breathes, more tension than he deserves coming out in his exhaled breath.
“Who would have done this and why? Are they helping the United?” I ask while standing back up.
“It was probably meant for our men, and the Unaligned stepped into it by accident,” he counters, his hand cupping his chin as he becomes lost in thought.
“I don’t think so. If the Unaligned had access to someone with this sort of knowledge, all of their mines would be like this. We need to burn these so they don’t try to dissect them and figure them out,” I murmur while starting to pick up the pieces of the devices.
“I think we should dissect them ourselves, and see if we can recreate them,” a snarky captain counters, his eyes dismissing me on his way through.
This jackass just arrived and he’s acting like this is his show to run.
“I can build these myself. As a matter of fact, I already have. The problem is the installation. You have to have someone with steady hands and steeled courage to put them in place. It’s a risky process because of how sensitive you have to make the device,” I say to the smug bastard.
“Last I checked, girl, I’m the captain. I’ll make the decisions. You just track.”
I roll my eyes, and Jase’s jaw tenses up as he glares at the man. He acts as though he’s about to say something, but I grab his arm and pull him away.
